I was looking through my junk drawer the other day — everybody’s got a junk drawer, don’t they — and came across a stack of old desk calendars I’ve held onto. These are the tiny calendars with the back that unfolds so you can prop it up on your desk. They came from Hackbarth Insurance and were always given to my parents, who were clients, around Thanksgiving or so.
I’ve got them from 1976 through 2000. I think my parents still get them, but mom forgot to give me the one in 2001 and that sort of ended the run.
I used to use these calendars to keep track of birthdays, anniversaries, ballgames and other important dates.
They span quite a bit of my young adulthood. Heck, that’s 25 years right there, from the second half of my seventh-grade year up until the time I was 37 and had four kids — three biologically. That approximately 3-inch stack of papers elicits many memories … mostly good.
I used to cross out each day as it passed. All the boxes in January 1976 were X’d out with a brown felt-tip pen that I thought was so cool. I mean who ever had colors other than blue, black and red back then?
Much to my chagrin, I lost that pen on Feb. 6, 1976. Must have; Feb. 7 is marked out in light blue starting my downward spiral into the dark pit of … whatever.
I started writing down events of importance in March of that year … a Boy Scout Court of Honor ceremony (I quit a few merit badges and a massive project short of Eagle Scout) and the Milwaukee Sentinel Sports Show that used to feature some guy throwing axes across a stage (at least that’s about the only thing I remember; that and lines and lines of boats).
April’s Boy Scout activities included a trading night, where my buddy, Chip, and I traded baseball cards. I’m not sure if anyone else traded anything. I think that night was made for Chip and me. That’s where my allowance went as a kid. You could get cards for 10 cents a pack back when I started collecting seriously in 1973.
Of course, 1976 was the bicentennial year. So there was much excitement leading up to July 4. We always had a parade in town on Independence Day and if you hung out with the Parks Department folks, you could dress up your bikes in red, white and blue stuff. I think I did that once.
Wonder why I crossed out August 3, my 13th birthday, that year. August 1976 must have been a wacky month. After a few months of simple Xs crossing out the squares, I chose to go nutty keeping track of the days in August. Curly-cues, stars, lines, shading … all was used that month. I blame it on puberty. What else could it have been?
September was no better, and I even marked the first day of my eighth-grade year in junior high with a “School Starts Boo!” entry on Sept. 7.
For some unknown reason, I have six dates in October marked with a big blue “G” in a blue box. What is this G? What could it have stood for? I am puzzled. I assume the G is the first letter of something that was to happen on those days. But what? Golf? I was not on a golf team. Girls? I was too afraid of them. This may remain a mystery forever.
One thing I wrote down that I do recall the details of was on Oct. 20, when I sent the Oakland Raiders a letter requesting they send a media guide. I even started the letter, “Just because I live in Wisconsin doesn’t mean I can’t like the Raiders,” hoping that would show them that I really liked the team. Of course, the Green Bay Packers come first. But back then, I really liked the Radiers, too.
Oh wow! I just figured out what the G’s stood for! This is so wacky cause I remembered while I was IM’ing my current and most wonderfully bodacious girlfriend. G stands for Ginny, a girl I had a crush on that year. Those were the six times I called her. That is quite a story, too. A story of me passing an ill-fated note of a desirous nature to her during math class that got passed on to others and elicited much taunting upon my person. Man, for a while I didn’t even want to go to school anymore. But, my dad was my Russian teacher, so he’d have noticed if I didn’t show up.
There really isn’t much of anything else on those pages from 1976. Just a mention of getting guy’s gifts from hiding spot on Dec. 24. I’m not sure what guys I’m talking about. It may have been my three brothers. We used to do a Christmas morning celebration thing. But when we got older, it turned into a Christmas Eve thing. It’s been Christmas Eve for a long time now, even as two of us have kids.
